James Cameron is best known for making huge blockbuster hits. Though he started smaller-scale with movies like The Abyss, the filmmaker famously went on to have a mᴀssive $2.2 billion hit in 1997 with тιтanic. Nowadays, three out of the top five highest-grossing movies ever were helmed by Cameron.

This includes 2009’s Avatar, which remains the highest-grossing movie of all time with its $2.9 billion gross. Avatar: The Way of Water comes in at no. 3 with $2.3 billion, and Cameron hopes to pull off another record with Avatar: Fire and Ash, which comes out on Dec. 19 of this year.

The director has big plans for the series even after this point, with Avatar 4 and Avatar 5 also in the works. That said, the Avatar movies are not the only projects Cameron has coming down the pike. Rather, the director is also working on a fantasy novel adaptation, a decision which he described in more detail in a recent interview.

James Cameron Explains Why He Is Making The Devils

He Is Doing It For Fun

Cameron has explained why The Devils is his next project. The Devils is a dark fantasy novel by Joe Abercrombie that was published in May of this year. The book’s plot focuses on a clergyman who is tasked with leading a group of “devils” on a dangerous journey in order to put a princess on the throne of Troy.

Cameron announced this project in June 2025, as his company, Lightstorm, had purchased the rights to The Devils. Cameron will co-write the movie’s script with Abercrombie. Speaking with Empire, Cameron revealed why he wants to adapt The Devils as one of his next projects.

The director said that he was “reading parts of the book out loud to [his] wife” while experiencing it for the first time. Even though it “doesn’t have the kind of conscience that Avatar does,” he felt that The Devils “is a movie you do for fun.” Check out the full quote from Cameron below:

It’s nuts. The whole thing is off its тιтs.

I was literally reading parts of the book out loud to my wife Suzy. And it dawned on me: “I like this book so much, I should just buy it.”

It doesn’t have the kind of conscience that Avatar does, but I don’t know if that’s a bad thing. [Hiroshima] is a movie you do because you have to. The Devils is a movie you do for fun.

What The Devils Means For James Cameron

Cameron Is Making A Diverse Array Of Projects

In this quote, Cameron references one of his other upcoming post-Avatar projects. Before acquiring the rights to The Devils, he had also secured the rights to Ghosts of Hiroshima. This is a far more emotionally dramatic and stirring story that focuses on the horrific effects of the World War 2 bombings on Japanese people.

This is the movie that Cameron is doing “because [he has] to,” while the Avatar movies are a huge money grab that are very time-consuming to make. As such, it will be fascinating to see what James Cameron does with a pᴀssion project like The Devils, which he is doing for a sense of joy and fun, rather than fulfill any specific moral or career obligation.

Source: Empire